New in Live Search: The Real Phone Experience

Wed 26 Jun 2019, 10:00 PM
AppTweak Releases

We’ve totally revamped our Live Search on iOS to reproduce the real phone experience. You can now perform a live search on any keyword and see the results exactly as users see them on their iPhone. We’ve also added a series of insights like which stories have been ranking on that keyword, or which ads are most visible.

Reproducing the iPhone experience of a Live Search

Apple is constantly adding new content to its Search result, such as Stories or Developer pages. These elements rank along apps on keywords, making the Search Results an even more competitive space than before. Not so long ago, we updated our Live Search to show all the non-app results that also appear on a keyword search, so as to give you a better idea of where your app stands. This update made it clear that it is essential for apps to rank in top results if they want to achieve a certain level of visibility.

We wanted to better reflect the actual visibility of apps in our Live Search module. Live Search now totally reproduces a keyword search as it is shown to users on their iPhone. We capture the ad that was running when we performed the search, we indicate if the app has the Editor’s Choice tag and even show when the first screen ends on the Phone view.

The new Live Search view reproduces a keyword search as seen on an iPhone by users

When users perform a keyword search on their iPhone, they only see two results on the first screen, and have to scroll to see more. That means that, even if your app ranks n°3 on a word (which is already a good position), it’s not even visible to the user unless he scrolls through the search results. If you add an Ad Banner or a Story, then even the 2nd app isn’t visible!

Live Search for “YouTube” and “Flip Dunk” only show one app in search results on the first screen.

It gets worst! Considering a keyword that has an ad running and a story in first results, well the app that ranks n°1 on that word, isn’t even visible in the first screen!

If both an Ad and a Story appear in top search results of a keyword, the n°1 app that ranks organically on that word isn’t visible on the first screen. Example with “travel” and “recipe”, users have to scroll through search results to see the apps that rank in 1st position on these keywords.

Of course, it can come in handy for analysis purposes to see the top 10 results on a keyword search, that’s why we’ve added a Dense View switcher, so that you can check the apps that rank best on a word in just a glance.

The Dense view of top apps that rank on the words “recipe” and “booking”

Stories and Bidding Apps on a keyword Search

More than just reproducing the iPhone experience of a keyword search, the Live Search module also indicates the Stories that we found ranking on the keyword over the last 90 days and the apps that were bidding on that word with their Share of voice over the last 90 days.

The “Stories” tab shows the Stories that have been ranking on a keyword (in this case”pokemon go”) over the last 90 days, in a detailed or dense view.

Whether directly in the Search Results or in the Stories tab, you can click to view the Story that we found ranking on the keyword. You can even see if that Story also ranks on other keywords.

The content and detail of a Story that ranks on “recipe” viewed directly in the Live Search

The detail of the keywords the a Story ranks on viewed directly in the Live Search

In the Bidding Apps tab, you’ll find all the apps that we found had an ad running on that keyword in the last 90 days, and their Share of Voice on that same period. The Share of Voice represents the percentage of times the app appeared in the Ad Banner over the last 90 days.

The apps that bid on the keywords “recipe” and “travel” and their Share of Voice on those keywords.

Now that we gave you a quick tour of this new Live Search, I’m sure you’re burning to see for yourself, which are the top bidding apps on your branded keywords? Are there any stories ranking above your app on important keywords? Which apps are featured in those stories? On how many keywords is your app actually visible in the first screen? Find out now on AppTweak!

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